Surrounding the smiling face of the Foreign Office minister Kim Howells in a picture taken in the Colombian region of Sumapaz are a general linked to paramilitary death squads and soldiers of a notorious unit of the Colombian army accused, including by Amnesty International, of torturing and killing trade unionists.

Here's the photo;

That's Kim in the middle with his hand resting cosily on the shoulder of one of the soldiers from the High Mountain Battalion. Just behind him to the left is General Mario Montoya, a man linked to the terrorist bombing of a newspaper and who was in charge of a special police unit operation when 40 people were 'disappeared'.-

"If you want to know about governments, all you have to know is two words: governments lie."I.F. Stone

"The State is an abstraction devouring the life of the people." Michael Bakunin

"...ironically, perhaps, the best organised dissenters in the world today are anarchists, who are busily undermining capitalism while the rest of the left is still trying to form committees."Jeremy Hardy